World’s sexiest TV tuner
Watching television on your laptop has suddenly become more stylish than sporting a pair of Nike's unique bespoke iD trainers.The company to thank is
Watching television on your laptop has suddenly become more stylish than sporting a pair of Nike’s unique bespoke iD trainers.
The company to thank is distributor, Envious Technology, which has just brought the Mobix AEV0E TV tuner (pictured) to the UK. Roughly the size of two digestive biscuits, the Mobix plugs into the USB 2.0 port on any Windows machine and – since it’s a digital tuner – gives you access to Freeview’s 30+ channels. That means unlimited BBC Three, Sky News and music videos for free.
Portable TV tuners, of course, are usually dreadful at picking up signals. Lately, however, manufacturers have been making progress – Elgato’s recent EyeTV boasts the best reception of any we’ve seen – and Mobix’s makers promise it’ll be superb at tuning into stations. In addition to a built-in antenna, it has an add-on external one that looks like a Manta Ray (that’d be why it’s called the Devil Ray, right?).
Like the competition, the Mobix will also record video as MPEG-2 to a computer’s hard drive – not MPEG-4 like Plextor’s model – and can schedule show recordings in advance. It’ll work with an EPG that’s currently unspecified: we’re guessing it’ll be TVTV since that’s one of the most popular for PC TV cards.
This bit of gorgeous televisual tech will cost £100 from www.gadgetbasement.com and other shops toward the end of next week.
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Update: we mistakenly listed Evolution as the distributor. This has now been updated to Envious Technology.
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
